should we? They are all gone. They knew less
than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them--and
unworthy of the children who must go beyond us."

This set me thinking in good earnest. I had always imagined--simply from
hearing it said, I suppose--that women were by nature conservative. Yet
these women, quite unassisted by any masculine spirit of enterprise, had
ignored their past and built daringly for the future.

Ellador watched me think. She seemed to know pretty much what was going
on in my mind.

"It's because we began in a new way, I suppose. All our folks were swept
away at once, and then, after that time of despair, came those wonder
children--the first. And then the whole breathless hope of us was for
THEIR children--if they should have them. And they did! Then there was
the period of pride and triumph till we grew too numerous; and after
that, when it all came down to one child apiece, we began to really
work--to make better ones."

"But how does this account for such a radical difference in your
religion?" I persisted.

She said she couldn't talk about the difference very intelligently,
not being familiar with other religions, but that theirs seemed simple
enough. Their great Mother Spirit was to them what their own motherhood
was--only magnified beyond human limits. That meant that they
felt beneath and behind them an upholding, unfailing, serviceable
love--perhaps it was really the accumulated mother-love of the race they
felt--but it was a Power.

"Just what is your theory of worship?" I asked her.

"Worship? What is that?"

I found it singularly difficult to explain. This Divine Love which they
felt so strongly did not seem to ask anything of them--"any more than
our mothers do," she said.

"But surely your mothers expect honor, reverence, obedience, from you.
You have to do things for your mothers, surely?"

"Oh, no," she insisted, smiling, shaking her soft brown hair. "We do
things FROM our mothers--not FOR them. We don't have to do things
FOR them--they don't need it, you know. But we have to live
on--splendidly--because of them; and that's the way we feel about God."

I meditated again. I thought of that God of Battles of ours,
that Jealous God, that Vengeance-is-mine God. I thought of our
world-nightmare--Hell.

"You have no theory of eternal punishment then, I take it?"

Ellador laughed. Her eyes were as bright as stars, and there were tears
in them, too. She was so